Canelés Bordelais or Canelés de Bordeaux are devine little cakes. They are popping up in more and more French bakeries and restaurants in Australia. They are slightly crunchy on the outside and deliciously soft on the inside.
I recently had a canelé at Luxembourg for dessert. I loved the texture and really wanted to make them at home. At Luxembourg they still prepare them the traditional way - in individual little copper moulds, very thinly lined with bees wax.
At a cooking class L and I attended a few weeks ago we did canelés as a little cake to go with our after lunch espressos. They were delicious and made using silicon moulds.
We went to a Christmas party at our frineds' place last night. We brought a plate of these little cakes for dessert and they were a hit.
Canelés Bordelais
250g flour
500g sugar
5 eggs
1 egg yolk
vanilla bean scraped
1 litre warm milk
50g melted butter
6 tbs rum
Zest of 1 lemon
Mix flour, sugar and eggs in a bowl. Make a well in the middle by pushing the mixture up the sides of the bowl.
Put the milk and scraped vanilla bean + seeds in a pot and heat gently, but do not allow to boil. Discard the vanilla bean. Pour about one third of the milk into the centre of the well, whisking to blend in. Stir well until the milk has been fully absorbed, then whisk in the rest of the milk, the melted butter, rum and lemon zest.
Cover and rest for 24 hours.
Preheat the oven to 160°C. Strain the mixture into a jug. Pour the mixture into special Canelé moulds*. The silicon moulds do not need to be buttered before the batter is poured in. Bake at 160°C for 1.5 hours or until caramelised. Sometimes this is longer than expected and a canelé may be taken out and tested.
Let cool on a rack on serve by itself for dessert or with coffee.
The bigger ones usually get served by themselves or some cream on the side for dessert. The little ones are served as a petit fours with coffee.
*I got my moulds in Melbourne from The Essential Ingredient and from Chef's Hat. Just give your local well stocked cookware store a go. If you live outside Australia, Amazon sells them too.
